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World's Largest Dinosaur Footprints Discovered In Western Australia (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The largest known dinosaur footprints have been discovered in Western Australia, including 1.7 meter prints left by gigantic herbivores. Until now, the biggest known dinosaur footprint was a 106cm track discovered in the Mongolian desert and reported last year. At the new site, along the Kimberley shoreline in a remote region of Western Australia, paleontologists discovered a rich collection of dinosaur footprints in the sandstone rock, many of which are only visible at low tide. The prints, belonging to about 21 different types of dinosaur, are also thought to be the most diverse collection of prints in the world. Steve Salisbury, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Queensland told ABC News: "We've got several tracks up in that area that are about 1.7 meters long. So most people would be able to fit inside tracks that big, and they indicate animals that are probably around 5.3 to 5.5 meters at the hip, which is enormous." "It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the early Cretaceous period," he said. The findings were reported in the Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The largest tracks belonged to sauropods, huge Diplodocus-like herbivores with long necks and tails. The scientists also discovered tracks from about four different types of ornithopod dinosaurs (two-legged herbivores) and six types of armored dinosaurs, including Stegosaurs, which had not previously been seen in Australia. At the time the prints were left, 130m years ago, the area was a large river delta and dinosaurs would have traversed wet sandy areas between surrounding forests.
It's easy to understand why one would feel the way you do, but I beg to differ. It has very real applications, especially today. Studying dinosaurs, their mass-extinction and in general, the era they lived in, gives us valuable data on our climate. If we understand what happened back then, we can prepare for the future. Climate research is extremely important and studying the dinosaur era is a crucial part of that research.
This is Australia. Those prints could be fresh.
Perhaps even more amazing, consider the catastrophic bad luck that befell the planet's dominant life form, and allowed our kind a window in which to proliferate.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
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It is useless to study dinosaurs. They don't exist and haven't existed for tens of millions of years.
I see you're unfamiliar with birds.
Why the sudden switch from meters to cm when 106cm is 1.06 Meters? Comparing 1.7 to 1.06 is much easier to process, instead of making us go through the double check in our mind that we got the units right.
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You could always watch dinosaurs for yourself and see if you don't learn anything from them.
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Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
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And turtles. Especially the teenage mutant ninja type.
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How 'bout a 'bloomin onion, govner?
FFS
1. 'blooming onion' is a menu item from a US restaurant chain serving American cuisine in which the items are typically and arbitrarily given Australian names. (although in this particular case the item does not have an Australianized named)
2. 'govner' is a bad rendition of an English (UK) word which does not have any traction in Oz.
Struth mate. Nothing you wrote has anything to do with straya and you definetly can't talk strine.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
One of the famous mathematicians of the 1800s was proud that his work had no practical applications. (Sorry, I don't remember which one.) Lots of mathematical work seems that way, yet his work and much else that seemed useless at the time is now essential for fields like cryptography.
Paleontology? Toy makers, movie makers, and vast hordes of children love dinosaurs. For some children, interest in dinosaurs leads to an interest in science generally.
Paleontology leads directly into study of evolution and helps damage mythologies such as religion. (Is that why you're so sensitive?) If you are so interested in preventing the waste of resources, do something to prevent colleges from teaching their students how to provoke riots.
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Those are footprints, not cankle impressions.
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The story can't be that these are newly discovered footprints. The aboriginals have known about them long enough that they are a part of their creation myths. Or is it just that white people know about them now?
Oh, it is super useful. For example, you cited climatology as being a useful science. We can use paleontology to inform us of changes in the biosphere in the past which we can correlate with what we can tell about the climate in the past. This knowledge is then presently applicable. If we know what ocean acidification did in the past (mass extinction) then we can decide that it is worth worrying about now.
That's a good question. They have to make sure this isn't a print where a very large foot slid in mud (this may or may not be obvious to footprint specialists) and that it isn't the diseased or deformed foot of some 1-off, if very large, animal.
Looking at all the large sauropods so far, assuming from the drawings they have examples of how big their feet are, and thus are accurate, this could be freaking huge.
If you look at the biggest known dinosaurs, in the first picture overlaying some, the largest two are of dubious provenance, and their feet aren't even as big as this print.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The perpetrators were intelligent raptors planting fake footprints to catch non-expecting dinosaurs with the Giant Old Biped Saurean Male Achillobator Creaking Killer Evading Detection experience. All a velociraptor joke to scare other dinosaurs. So they could eat them while paralyzed and gobsmacked with fear. Clever, clever girl ...
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Setting aside the pursuit of knowledge, dinosaur fossils have real world value that only an idiot would ignore. Individuals and institutions are interested in dinosaurs and are willing to pay a lot of money, sometimes even millions of dollars ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) to own and display them. Dinosaur fossils can be tourist attractions that generate revenue. There's also a large black-market for fossils illegally stolen from lands. If some "study" allows one to protect, document, and safely unearth dinosaur fossils so that they can be resold at the highest value, that could be money very well spent.